Food for thought: healthful choices available here in midstate

Since I began reading Michael Pollan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma,” I’m not so sure. After visiting a local farm, I realized I have my own dilemma: 2-year-old Kaj (rhymes with eye) Miller has a better answer to the question than I do.

Farmer Brooks Miller and son, Kaj, work on their family farm in New Bloomfield, Perry County.
Granted, we all know that Fruit Roll-Ups don’t grow on trees and it doesn’t rain Cocoa Pebbles, but we hardly know where our food once called home. Not Kaj. His understanding is based soundly upon his experience on his parents’ farm, North Mountain Pastures, nestled in New Bloomfield, Perry County. It has made the young toddler a sage in the field of food compared with most Americans and — gulp — me.

His mentors are his lively parents: Brooks, his burly and patient father, is a former NASA engineer who believed life was bigger than his cubicle. Anna, his warm, smiling mother, has been studying, growing and working with food since her doctors were unable to solve her teenage digestive complications. Both had their own dilemmas, and the only thing that cured them was a life dedicated to their natural, grass-based livestock farm.

The young couple (unrelated to the writer) also are business partners who make a happy living not by conquering but cooperating with their land. Brooks walked 60 acres of their leased farm with me as Kaj led us past the goats, their cows and sheep, and lastly rounding the farm with their pigs and chickens. He explained his simple method of farming, which was based upon harnessing each animal’s instinct and interconnecting it with the next; it’s amazing that a majority of the food we eat is so much more complicated. In fact, a look at the ingredients list will tell that tale.

When we returned to their beautiful, rustic log cabin, they disclosed where most of our food calls home. They channeled philosophy, chemistry, biology, medicine, politics and history as we discussed how much healthier people could be if they avoided processed food filled with preservatives, pesticides and antibiotics.

We also talked about how many of today’s dilemmas — from autism to diabetes to rampant obesity to even orthodontics — owed at least part of their debilitative tendencies to what we eat.

“Braces,” I wondered out loud, “really”?

“We’ve studied the Weston A. Price Foundation,” said Anna, “and their research shows that there were two things that were indicative of the healthiest people all around the world: their soil and their teeth.”

“But,” I said, “It’s expensive to eat healthy. A dozen eggs from the North Mountain Pasture farm costs almost two times as much as a dozen from the grocery store. How can you charge that?”

“It’s a shame that people are willing to pay more for quality cars and clothes,” said Brooks, “but believe that food for themselves and their children is supposed to be cheap.”

With ballooning health care costs, rising rates of disease, farm-related pollution, and increasing government subsidies, it seems like all food is not the same. We eventually all experience the costs of cheap food.

Our conversation floored me, but they remained glowing in their smiles. “Things are getting and will continue to get so much better,” Anna said. “Each month people are realizing more about their food.”

Jake Miller
The young couple also are teaming with several other farmers (such as vegetable-based Spiral Path Farm) to make healthier local options available and the people are responding; every month they have a record customer base.

I hesitated: “That’s great, but I’m not sure I can ever give up eating at Chic-Fil-A.” They both laughed.

“We don’t expect the food industry to change overnight,” Anna said. “We just want people to understand they have food choices.” I breathed a sigh of relief.

But I have chosen to supply most of my meat from North Mountain Pastures, because I’ve never tasted a more delicious pork chop, ribs or egg omelet. The best part about this eating experience was the sweet taste of solving my dilemma: Kaj no longer possesses a food-smarts’ advantage on me. I now know where the sweet flavor of my food originates.

Jake Miller is a teacher at Good Hope Middle School in Cumberland Valley School District. He is writing a monthly column through April. jakemiller@ymail.com.